News

Redwood Materials, the battery recycling venture founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, came out of stealth mode last year, and announced that it is recycling scrap from Panasonic’s battery cell production at Tesla’s Gigafactory Nevada. In July, it raised $700 million in new investment. Now Redwood has dropped a bit of a bombshell: it

Nissan European design boss Matthew Weaver has reimagined the first-generation Nissan Silvia as a modern electric car. Unveiled at the 1964 Tokyo motor show, the original CSP311 Silvia launched a nameplate that would, decades later, include the S13 and S14 generations (sold in the U.S. as the Nissan 240SX) of drifting and tuning fame. However,

Advanced, high-performance magnetics are crucial components in the electromobility industry. Properly selected magnetics can help to improve efficiencies, provide lower losses and reduce operating temperatures to increase overall system and vehicle performance. Other magnetics are critical for managing EMC, gate drivers and general circuit management. Rapid development based on platform designs utilizing high-performance magnetic materials

BYD unveiled two new battery-electric heavy-duty trucks, the Gen3 8TT and 6F, at the recent ACT Expo in Long Beach. The Gen 3 8TT is “a versatile vehicle, capable of performing drayage, regional haul, and distribution work,” whereas the 6F “can perform regional haul and distribution work and can also be equipped with a body

Wrightspeed, the firm founded by Tesla co-founder Ian Wright, builds electric powertrains for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. Now the company has announced an agreement with vehicle manufacturer Matthews Specialty Vehicles to convert buses, trucks and specialty vehicles to EVs and/or PHEVs. The companies aim to produce 5,000 vehicles over the next five years. For the

Austria-based Easelink demonstrated its Matrix Charging system at the recent IAA Mobility 2021 trade show in Munich. Automotive parts supplier Schaeffler integrated Matrix Charging into a demo model of its Rolling Chassis, a platform for driverless mobility solutions. Easelink’s Matrix Charging system is a fully automated conductive charging system, and the company sees it as

A baker’s dozen vehicles from the 2015 film “Mad Max: Fury Road” are heading to auction through Lloyds. The online auction runs Sept. 25-26. Returning to the post-apocalyptic wastelands inhabited by ex-cop Max Rockatansky decades after the previous movie premiered, “Fury Road” featured massive chases and battles between fleets of real vehicles, all built for

The House Ways and Means Committee recently released a proposal to revamp the federal EV tax credit as part of their pending spending bill. You may reasonably ask whether it’s really worth writing about this at the moment, as it’s highly unlikely that the $3.5-trillion package is going to pass in anything like its current

Sponsored by HBK In recent years there has been an increased interest in electric and more electric aircraft, including both novel all-electric aircraft, drones, rigid air ships and traditional aircraft with efficient and more electric components. Validating these systems and components has challenges due to the nature of aerospace testing as well as the high

Solid Power, a producer of all-solid-state EV batteries, plans to build a second Denver-area production facility in Thornton, Colorado. The new plant will expand Solid Power’s capacity to produce materials for its battery cells, including the ability to produce up to 30 metric tons of sulfide-based solid electrolyte material annually—a 25x throughput increase over current

For most car buyers, their technical automotive knowledge amounts to this: they know a car has an engine (or motor), and they want the biggest, most powerful one they can afford. Early-adopting EV buyers seem likely to be a little more knowledgeable, and Tesla is taking the unprecedented step of giving buyers a choice between

This week saw the inaugural running of the Munich auto show, the replacement for Germany’s traditional auto show in Frankfurt. The new show places its main focus on urban mobility but there were also plenty of cars designed for individual mobility on display. One of the stars was the Porsche Mission R concept, a vision

Intelligent energy network provider GridPoint has launched a new building-centric EV charging solution. GridPoint takes a whole-building approach to managing customers’ peak demand charges by analyzing and managing load across several controllable, grid-interactive assets from a single platform, including HVAC, lighting, and now EV chargers. Customers can also enroll EV chargers and other eligible building

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has signed into law a bill that will ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks in the state by 2035. The bill (S.2758/A.4302) was introduced last October, and passed the legislature in April. It establishes a goal to make all sales or leases of new passenger cars and

For the electrification of the automobile powertrain, new materials play a crucial role in enabling and facilitating a wide adoption of electromobility. Join this session at the Charged Virtual Conference on EV Engineering this Fall, presented by Huntsman Advanced Materials, to learn more about new materials serving as secondary insulation in the stator and rotor

Dutch startup LeydenJar Technologies has raised €22 million in a new investment round. The company will use the funding to scale up its production facility and further develop its battery technology. LeydenJar raised the amount from Dutch and American venture capitalists, and also received  a subsidy of over €5 million from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency.

Chevrolet is playing catch up after the luke-warm reception the redesigned 2019 Chevrolet Silverado received. It’s time for some defense. The 2022 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 was unveiled on Thursday. When it arrives in the spring of 2022 it’ll bring with it a larger touchscreen infotainment system, a seemingly nicer interior, GM’s Super Cruise hands-free highway

EV Battery validation demands more than iterative optimization; it demands innovation in multiple dimensions for which there is no playbook or best practices. Expectations on safety and performance continue rising. Regulations, standards, and ways to test against them change constantly. How do you keep up with this ever-moving target? You move faster by optimizing the

Electrifying the US Postal Service fleet would be one of the most effective ways for the federal government to encourage EV adoption (while saving taxpayers billions of dollars and eliminating tons of emissions). However, there is a strong faction at the agency that seems determined to prevent that from happening, and some see the draft

Warehousing and distribution company Performance Team (a Maersk company) has placed an order for 16 Volvo VNR Electric Class 8 trucks—the largest order for the model to date. The Volvo VNR Electric is designed for local and regional freight distribution, and the new e-trucks will go into service carrying regional loads to customers across Southern

Additive manufacturing specialist Sakuú has developed a 3 Ah lithium metal solid-state battery (SSB) that it says equals or betters the performance of current lithium-ion batteries. Sakuú has been developing its first-generation SSB battery technology alongside its flagship additive manufacturing platform, which is set for commercial launch by the end of this year. Each battery

Italy wants to protect Ferrari and Lamborghini from a proposed future ban on internal-combustion engines enacted by the European Union, Bloomberg reported Saturday. The Italian government is in talks with the EU about exempting the two supercar builders from a proposed phaseout of new internal-combustion vehicles announced in July, which would go into effect in

Vehicle temperature control system manufacturer Thermo King, a brand of Trane Technologies (NYSE: TT), plans to invest more than $100 million over the next three years to deliver a fully electric product in every segment of the cold chain. Thermo King’s all-electric portfolio, which will be branded “evolve,” will include electric refrigeration solutions for truck,

India’s Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has tested four Tesla models and certified them to be roadworthy. “The tests ensure the vehicle matches the requirements of the Indian market in terms of emission and safety and road worthiness,” states the ministry. The models tested appear to be variants of Models 3 and Y. Tesla

Banking giant NatWest plans to install 600 public chargers across its office locations in the UK. EQUANS, a new autonomous business within the multinational electric utility ENGIE, will supply, commission and operate the Alfen Pro-Line 7.4 kW dual chargers, which will be part of EQUANS’s national GeniePoint network. The chargers will be available to staff,

Engineering services provider Ricardo has appointed Adrian Schaffer as its new President of Automotive and Industrial for North America. Schaffer’s long career as a transport industry executive spans numerous fields, including manufacturing, electrification, telematics and connectivity, across North America and the globe. As Director of Marketing at Motorola, he worked with GM on the then-new

Mercedes is readying a full assault on the electric vehicle market with EVs big, small, and performance-oriented. On Sunday, the German luxury brand showed the Concept Mercedes-Maybach EQS SUV as a preview of an EV for the ultra-luxury segment. Mercedes didn’t give any stats about battery size, horsepower, or electric driving range, but it did say

Sponsored by Dana As OEMs continue transitioning their conventionally powered vehicles to battery-electric, it takes more than just swapping out a few parts. Electrifying a vehicle requires a complete system overhaul — that includes thermal management systems. When it comes to vehicle design, thermal management is often an underappreciated engineering discipline — and it’s becoming

Louisiana may be more famous for étouffée than electric vehicles, but money from Volkswagen’s dirty diesel settlement will finance several measures to clean up the air in the Pelican (or Petroleum) State. Louisiana received $19.8 million from the 2016 settlement. Around $12 million went to replace 351 diesel school buses (some with propane or CNG

VIA Motors was founded in 2010, and got a lot of media attention thanks to Chairman Bob Lutz, the “Father of the Chevy Volt.” The original business plan was converting GM pickups and vans to PHEVs. Now the company plans to produce fully electric commercial vehicles for fleets. Ideanomics (NASDAQ: IDEX) has agreed to acquire